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The innovative and adaptive styles of consumers purchasing health products were surveyed using the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI). Another survey was conducted to determine the relationship between KAI results and the rate of purchase by female consumers. Results indicated that the three consumer subgroups generated by the KAI differed in terms of level of consumption.

Two aspects of the extent of computer use--the number of applications to which the computer is put and the frequency of computer use--are investigated in relation to adaptive-innovative cognitive style and personal involvement in computing. The number of computing applications taken up is related on a priori grounds to sensation-seeking, a personality trait which has been consistently associated with both the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory and with consumers' exploratory behavior. Described are two studies of the extent of computer use in (i) home computing and (ii) task-oriented computing by graduate business students. The number of applications employed by home computer owners was weakly related to both adaptive-innovative cognitive style and to personal involvement in computing. The study of students' behavior shows again that scores on both inventories are related to the extent of computer use but that, while Kirto inventory scores are uniquely associated with the number of computer applications used, Personal Involvement scores are uniquely associated with the frequency of computer usage.

The article presents information about the articles published in the February 1993 issue of "European Journal of Marketing." The article "Market Development Using New Products and New Customers: A Role for Perceived Risk," by V.W. Mitchell and P. Bouslani, analyses the breakfast cereal market as a basis on which to conduct a study of risk in new product development. Moreover the article argues that the main alternatives for increased consumer demand, namely, product development, converting non-users and encouraging existing users to use more, have associated risks in the consumer's mind. Another article "Global Corporate Philanthropy-- Marketing Beyond the Call of Duty?," by Marylym Collins, addresses the growing incidence of corporate philanthropy on the part of multinational corporations, not only in their country of origin, but also on an increasingly international scale. The article "Importance-Performance Analysis and the Measurement of Service Quality," by Christine T. Ennew, Geoffrey V. Reed and Martin R. Binks, proposes a simple index which can be applied to ordinal or cardinal data and will provide a convenient aggregate summary of the extent to which a product or service meets consumer expectations.